User blog:LexsJB/Old style vs. New style
Hi, Merry Christmas. I hope you had a good day yesterday full of magic (sadly it isn't as easy to believe in Father Christmas at my age but I try my best). It was also sad too because one musician I sort of liked died, but that's 2016 for you. Anyway, for Christmas, I jokingly asked for a fairy book and I actually got one - Mimi the Laughter Fairy. It's the first book in the new style that I've managed to actually hold, and that isn't in a digital format on my iPad. When reading it, I immediately realised many differences between the new style and old style, not just the graphics. When I made a blog about my thoughts on the new design, I asked myself lots of questions like if the fairy on the side was still there or if the book was physically sparkly and I'm glad to have finally found the answers. Here is the essay blog that I've been dying to write. For those who have never seen the new style in real life, this is what I found. The new books are... 'Flimsier' The book cover seems to be very very very bendy and thin. This also may sound silly, but the pages are thinner too. When you flick one page, the new books actually make a softer sound. This is also over the top but I took the effort to calculate the thickness of one page using my old Physics lessons knowledge. Compressing (pushing together) the pages as much as possible, for the new book, I got 0.0125cm thick. For the old book, I got 0.01575cm thick. 'Less shiny' The mirror foil they used for the fairy's sparkles is gone. I didn't know this because the sparkliness of books doesn't appear on my iPad and I thought the new books' shininess wouldn't appear either but I turns out there actually isn't any. It's just printed pink stars and that's it. Update: Since I got Susie the Sister Fairy, I can see that it is in fact shiny, as well as the other specials. Maybe it's just series books that aren't sparkly. Feel free to comment below. 'Different on the side of the book' There is an actual picture of the fairy on the side, not just a cut up fairy. This is less satisfying but it does help identify the fairy when it's sitting on a shelf next to others. They also don't write the full title of the book, but just the name. Also, instead of the number of the fairy in the whole franchise (eg. '119'), it's the number of the fairy in the series, in this case number 3. This is kinda more useful, right, but less interesting to see which number fairy in the whole series you have. 'Plainer on the inside cover' It is plain and doesn't have any colourful advertising of other fairy books. On the subject of advertising, the newest book of the old style that I have, Daisy the Festival Fairy, has a colourful advertisement for the Rainbow Fairies as well as the Helping Fairies. The advertisement in the new book is black and white pages about the other books of the franchise like the Early Reader and Beginner picture books. 'Introducing a way to get kids to read more' The new books have a Rainbow Magic Reading Challenge where you collect the cut-out coins and stick them onto a poster you print out from the website. The more coins and points you collect, the higher rank of fairy you'll be (VIP, Fairy Princess, Fairy in training etc). To be honest, I don't see the point in this, only to get more kids to buy the books, however it makes reading and buying the books more exciting. And geez, they really throw the Rainbow Magic Reading Challenge in your face. On the first two pages, it says exactly the same about "Join the reading challenge!" as if you somehow missed the invite on the first page. And also on the back cover. 'Less fancy and the chapters are weird' Along with the sparkliness of the old design, the trademark curly fairy font that we all tried copying when trying to copy the book cover is gone, replaced with a more normal font. In my opinion, the new font that greets me at the top of every page, every chapter page and the contents page makes it seem like it's not a Rainbow Magic book. Talking about chapter pages, the big arching rainbow in the old books is gone, replaced with a cloudy rainbow much like the logo. This actually really annoys me because instead of the chapter title sitting cosily in the rainbow arch, the chapter is right under the rainbow. It's very unsatisfying for someone like me who cares about the appearance of the book. The chapter rainbows do not fully complete the page and seem a little out of place. The chapter page itself is actually really annoying too. Instead of just the chapter title, it goes "Chapter One: Mr Twinkle's Tumble. Chapter Two: Chapter Three: Chapter 4:" I mean does that really matter to us? It makes the contents page really full and less slick. 'Less busy' The covers aren't filled with fairy dust and the glowing white circle kinda frames the fairy, and it isn't being invaded by sparkly stars like in the old book. There are less unneeded dots of fairy dust and less symbols. However, the colour scheme is boring as it is only pink and has little gradient. In the old style books, they would have obvious gradients with different shades or even with different colours. These block colours are quite boring. 'Not including the rainbow in the corner' The trademark rainbow in the bottom right corner has gone. It used to be the trademark of the UK books but naa, not anymore. It doesn't give the feeling of Mimi and the Friendship Fairies as a group as their symbols aren't sitting on the rainbow in the corner. Also I just realised writing this now that the symbol of the fairy whose book it is is shiny. Wow, the things I miss. 'Including "The End"' I'm sure it isn't just me but in my primary school we were told to never finish a story with The End because it's lazy. Well, there it is. The only thing that hasn't changed is the lightning bolts on Jack Frost's poem. Well that's all I can find to criticise about this book. I'm not gonna comment on the writing content because I'm too old to enjoy these books like a new Rainbow Magic reader would (to be honest, reading the book, the words went into my head and straight out. I didn't even notice when the fairy appeared..) I hope this blog somehow interests or educates you. Thank you and have a good new year. I mean, it would be very easy to have a year better than this one. LexsJBTalk 14:56, December 26, 2016 (UTC) (updated 19th March 2018) New thoughts Well look at that, I've gone and wasted a good few hours of my afternoon browsing the internet and reading old blogs. I have a habit of coming back to old blogs and sneakily adding bits onto the end so I'm sorry about that. So it's nearly been a year since I made this review and I've had a year to get used to it. You can see I was harsh on the new style, even criticising the density of the paper. I'm happy to say I have got used to the new style. In fact I quite like how the side has the picture of the fairy on it because when I'm looking in book shops and the rainbow magic books are high up and I can't read the name properly I can just look for the fairy and recognise her picture. So that's an improvement. I also appreciate the consistency of the covers, with the white glowing circle and in some cases the single colour scheme does work. However I'll never get over the loss of the rainbow in the corner, or the long numbered chapters, or the rainbow over the chapter. I also don't like the fact they're reprinting the old books in the new style, redrawing the original cover illustration by Georgie Ripper. You could see the watercolour she used but now it's all digitalised and it's kind of less charming, but I'm not out to insult the illustrations again. But since they're grouping old series and new series into box sets, I guess they do need to look the same. And at least I'm not annoyed by it anymore. LexsJBTalk 18:07, February 18, 2019 (UTC) Category:Blog posts